10 Things You Never Knew About Penny Pingleton
by speakingwordsofwisdom
Summary: Title says it all, please r&r!
1. Chapter 1

**Hii peeps**

**Ok, i promise, on my laptop, the muffin im about to eat and Gemmas mighty boosh dvd that I WILL WRITE MORE OF MY OTHER HAIRSPRAY STORY!. i feel incredibly guilty for not updating, since you guys are so nice to send me all those reviews....BUT i think i owe you a good chapter. And something i scribble out in a free period will NOT be worthy of you. I have ideas, i promise. But everythings pilling on right now- A levels SUCK!**

**Anyway, i wanted to write, but im too tired to write anything good. So ill write this. Penny-centric cos shes my favourite hairspray character. I dont know why. Maybe just cos Amanda Byrnes is pretty and she has a cool solo in Cant Stop The Beat.**

**Review pleeeaseee! Its friday night nd im writing a FANFICTION. Im a little bit sad lol**

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1) She's occaisionally imagined being friends with Amber von Tussel.

Ever since the first day of school. Her mother had spent a good ten minutes giving her a warning about all the evil influences in public schools nowadays and the dangers of talking to boys or even (gasp) Negroe children, and when she eventually enterd the classroom late, the golden haired girl wearing a ruffled pink dress was already sitting in the center of the front row of desks.

She could've been a princess, straight from the pages of sleeping beauty or rapunzel, and Penny wonderd why she hadn't even known dresses existed that were that pretty. They were nothing like the plain dresses her mother made her wear.

She waited all through first and second period for a chance to talk to the princess-girl, and when recess came, she waited until they were both standing in line to play hopscotch before coming shyly up beside her. "My name's Penny. What's yours?"

"Hi, I'm Amber" There was a slight pause.

"I like your dress"

"Thanks. I hate yours."

Some of the other girls heard, and started laughing, and Penny retreated quickly, blushing.

She didn't cry. The way Amber had said it.... it hadn't sounded like she was saying it to be mean. It just sounded like she was being honest, that she didn't like Pennys dress but she wasn't holding it against her.

When the other girls had laughed, though, that WAS to be mean.

Before the first day was over, Amber had started saying more things that WERE mean, and the other girls laughed even more, and soon Amber was surrounded by a little cluster of them.

By that time, Penny had started talking to Tracey, and so it didn't bother her too much.

But sometimes she still wonders how everything could've turned out differently if the girls HADN'T overheard and laughed.

Maybe they even would've become friends.

She can't admit it to Tracey, who hates Amber too much to even imagine her being anything but pure evil...but she can't help but imagine the Amber who could've existed if it wasn't for that one day at recess, and then a whole bunch of stuff thats happend since then.

Sometimes she even thinks she sees glints of the other Amber trying to be seen.

She knows shes probably the only person in the world who believes this.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N American equivalent to GCSEs, anyone? I'll put GCSEs cos i don't know what to put

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2) She's REALLY smart.

No, seriously. She out-performed Tracey, Link, Seaweed, Amber, in fact, all of the council kids and most of the kids in their year, in the GCSEs, and in every one of the end of year tests since first grade.

It's not something she talks about, and neither does anyone else, and she's never really minded the fact that most people usually act very surprised when they learn that she has a 4.0 grade point average. When what you say usually makes people look at you in a slightly amused, slightly pitying way, you know they think that a slightly different outlook is synononmous with perfect grades.

But it doesn't matter. She's fine with being known as "Traceys slightly blonde friend", or "Seaweeds girlfriend" (she's actually better than fine with being Seaweeds girlfriend), because she's never really wanted to be in the spotlight, and if you have to be defined by something, its better to be defined by people you love rather than by pieces of paper.

She's secretly proud of her grades, though.

They were the paper-thin line, where the separate spheres of she and her mothers lives overlapped- bringing home another test with 100% or another straight-A report was one of the few ways she could secure her mothers approval and praise, for a day or two at least, and she treasured the times Prudy would look at her and say "Well done. I'm so proud of you".

Grades were also her thing. Tracey had dancing, and standing up for things, added to which she was alomost universally loved by all who met her; Link had his singing career, and Seaweed had his reputation as undisputed leader of the detention crowd.

Penny was used to being on the fringes, and mostly she didn't mind.

But it was nice to know she had her intelligence, too.

It was like her secret power.


	3. Chapter 3

This will be a smidget shorter than a one-shot....possibly. Sorry.

This me taking a short, non-permanent break from Because of you (please check it out!)_i feel bad for neglecting my hairspray fics for my Wicked fics. Please forgive me- i'm swamped with revision. Don't you just love it when teaches assume their subject is your only subject?

Disclaimer: it is not a good idea to mix pepper, salt, icecream, frozen yoghurt and chilli sauce. It does not taste good, and anyone who dares you to drink it is pure evil... Incidently, nandos charges you for pepper if you use too much :o

I wrote this cos i'm so SICK of people idolising Pennys father in fanfiction. He's definitly at least as bad as Trudy.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

3) She can remember every detail of the day her father left. Mostly she can remember feeling relieved he was gone.

People have often insinuated that everything would've been better if her father had stayed in Baltimore, instead of driving to Atlantic City in the family car with the faded green paintwork, the backseat filled with clothes.

Sometimes Penny hears them whispering that his leaving is what did it, the gradual disintergration of the Pingletons: first, the mother retreating into religion, so far that her friends and even daughter couldn't reach her.  
Then, the daughter listening to that race music, and then becoming associated with those kids- the chunky girl who was almost constantly in detention, and, of course, all those _negroes._

And finally, even dating one of them, something that had proved the last straw for Trudy before her daughter moved out (to _live_ with them, some people rumored).

There was always the concrete belief that none of this would've happend had Mr Pingleton still been around.

But gossip is always innacurate. Like the belief that her divorce had driven Trudy to the church.

No, Penny could remember long before this her mother had already begun to withdraw.  
The older she got, the rarer her mothers smiles were becoming, and the less time her father spent at home.

Conversations became brusquer, voices became louder. Money became shorter, somehow spent during her fathers numerous "business trips", and Trudy began to spend the time at church that she used to spend with her husband.

On the rare nights Mr Pingleton was home, little was said. Penny rememberd one night when she was eight, tiptoing barefoot to the kitchen for a glass of water, and happening to glance through the half-open door of her parents bedroom.

It was the middle of summer, and the room was warm, but somehow the tense silence made her shiver. Trudy was reading her bible, Mr Pinglton was reading a newspaper. Neither one spoke from their separate beds.

It was only later that she realised normal couples shared a bed, but by that time her father had already left.

She remembers the day her father left- in the middle of a warm June day, leaving just a note, to be read by his wife who was grocery shoping, and his daughter who was skipping on the street with the other children.

Her nine year old self enterd the living room, hot and out of breath, to find her mother standing in the middle of the floor, right in the middle of the blue and green rug. Her face was streaked with tears, but her back was turned to the door.

A piece of notebook paper, with blue lines, was crumpled in her mothers fist, and her rosary beads clicked softly.

The sound of rosary beads would soon become a normal background noise in the Pingleton house.


End file.
